This invention relates to vehicles and more specifically to a method and apparatus for mounting vehicle doors.
In vehicle manufacture, doors are frequently mounted on a vehicle body and adjusted to provide a desired fit at a relatively early stage in the assembly operation. Once the door has been mounted and adjusted to provide a suitable fit, the door is removed for further processing. The further processing often includes applying a coat of finish. It also may include such further steps as mounting a window and window actuator, attaching a suitable lining, and mounting handles and an armrest.
With over the highway trucks, in the past doors have been mounted by connecting hinge leafs to so called nut plates disposed on the side of a mounting panel opposite a connected hinge leaf. Fasteners connecting the hinge leaf to the nut plate were left in a loosened condition while the door was manipulated to a desired adjusted position. Once in the desired position the fasteners were tightened to clamp the hinge leaf and nut plate to opposite sides of the mounting panel. If the door was removed for further processing or to facilitate a vehicle repair an operator then had to repeat the door adjustment positioning when the door was remounted. This was true because there has been no satisfactory mechanism for relocating doors in heavy duty vehicles such as class 8 over the highway trucks and tractors.
For service and repair within the cab of a heavy duty vehicle, there are occasions when door removal will greatly facilitate access to the site of the service or repair. In the past remounting of the door following such service or repair has required replication of the door adjustment performed during manufacture. Not only is such replication time consuming, it is seldom performed as well as the initial alignment during manufacture. This is because persons who align doors in manufacture do it repeatedly and if they do not do it well soon find themselves replaced by others. People who perform service and repair on vehicles on the other hand are selected for their repair skills, not their alignment skills, and do not have the benefit of repetitive opportunities to improve their skills.
Many vehicle and manufacturing processes and mechanisms have been proposed for facilitating relocation of a removed door in the adjusted position that had been achieved prior to door removal. The mechanisms that have been proposed are often complicated and typically are unsuited for use on heavy duty vehicles such as over the highway trucks and tractors. Moreover, many of the mechanisms used for relocating doors add weight to a vehicle. Every pound of weight added to an over the highway tractor reduces by one pound the lawful payload which can be transported with the tractor. When one considers that an over the highway tractor typically is operated for the order of 500,000 miles and that for many applications haulage charges are a function of the weight of a payload, a pound of vehicle weight translates into a loss of 250 ton miles of cargo over the life of the vehicle.
Accordingly it would be desirable to provide an inexpensive light weight system for facilitating the relocation of a door in an adjusted position after a door has been removed from a vehicle cab.
With a device made in accordance with a present invention, a locator is mounted on one side of a mounting panel and connected to a nut plate on the opposite side of the panel. The locator and the hinge leaf have complemental surfaces that fix the two in a constant relative position as positioning adjustment is made. The fastener connecting the locator is left in a loosened condition until the door has been moved to an adjusted position and the nut plate and hinge leaf have been clamped against opposite sides of the panel. The fastener securing the locator is then tightened to fix the locator in an adjusted position.
When a door is subsequently removed for further processing or for access to the cab during servicing and repair the fastener securing the locator in place is left untouched so that the locator is maintained in its adjusted position. When a door is remounted the hinge leaf is positioned to reengage the complemental surfaces of the hinge leaf and the locator thereby relocating the hinge leaf in the previously attained adjusted position. The mounting fasteners are then reinserted and tightened to complete the remounting of the door in its adjusted position. Preferably each hinge leaf of a set of hinges supporting a door is equipped with complemental surfaces that coact with an associated locator. Thus if there are upper and lower hinges an operator returning a door to its mounted position on a vehicle cab locates each hinge leaf by coaction with that hinge leaf""s associated locator
Accordingly the objects of the invention are to provide a novel and improved mechanism for facilitating removal and reinstallation of vehicle doors and a process of doing so.